An artist’s rendering shows the layout of the new Apple campus that is under construction in Cupertino.

Photo: Via Bloomberg

An artist’s rendering shows the layout of the new Apple campus...

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Instead of a traditional corporate campus, Apple hopes to expand in Cupertino with a single building for 12,000 workers -- a round structure with a futuristic design that Steve Jobs likened to a spaceship.

Instead of a traditional corporate campus, Apple hopes to expand in Cupertino with a single building for 12,000 workers -- a round structure with a futuristic design that Steve Jobs likened to a spaceship.

Instead of a traditional corporate campus, Apple hopes to expand in Cupertino with a single building for 12,000 workers -- a round structure with a futuristic design that Steve Jobs likened to a spaceship.

Instead of a traditional corporate campus, Apple hopes to expand in Cupertino with a single building for 12,000 workers -- a round structure with a futuristic design that Steve Jobs likened to a spaceship.

Burrows says the building costs have expanded to ~$5 billion from an initial estimate of ~$3 billion, due largely to "fit and finish" issues with the construction. Burrows singles out a lot of Jobs' highly specific requests for the building.

Wood used inside the building is to come from a specific type of maple tree, and it can only be "heartwood," which is the wood from the center of the tree.

The building will have six-square kilometers of bent glass, which will be bent at a factory in Germany, then shipped to California. The company doing the glass had to develop new machines for making it.

Apple will pre-build bathrooms and cubicle banks then have them driven to the office and installed. This saves time and allows the construction to be more exact.

Jobs also wanted the seams where walls met to be 1/32 of an inch across, whereas the standard for construction is 1/8 of inch.

He wanted the ceiling to be polished concrete instead of sound absorbing material. Apple also has a very specific plan for the concrete ceiling. It wants to pour ceiling molds on the ground, then lift it to the ceiling, an approach that is far more expensive.